Blogs from Trujillo, Peru, South America

Máncora (21/05/2018 - 21/05/2018) Máncora: a tiny, rustic beach town on Peru's northern coastline, and my first stop in this beautiful country. This quiet, seaside village boasts epic surfing, excellent ceviche, and all-year-round, sun-drenched skies. It was far less touristic than Montañita, and had far more character: I liked it immediately. Seeing as I had just gone from beach town to beach town, I thought just 1 day here would be perfecto. It was also the ideal pit-stop as it was so close to the Ecuador border. My first night bus (I am getting braver) to cross the Ecuador-Peru border (at 3am) went smoothly. Although it was so sad seeing hundreds of Venezuelan families wrapped in blankets huddled everywhere I looked. Political corruption, food shortages, and unemployment are all contributing to the worsening crisis there; and ... read more

I’m so lost with the days.....let’s say day nine as we started on. Sunday! Day nine - Monday Trujillo. As you know, we were struggling to dock yesterday because of the fog. Eventually though, we were in and met with scenery very similar to San Martin ..... it actually looked more like a slag heap....we couldn’t decide if the mountains were man made products of a long ended mining industry of if they were natural sand/rock dunes. It was an eerie looking place with the fog surrounding us....Dave mentioned something about lepers coming out of the fog, I was convinced he said leopards....this lead to a period of utter confusion on my part. 🙂 Little little and Pew went into hiding until i convinced them that there were no leopards in the fog. A complimentary shuttle ... read more

My last month with Windaid was different because this time we had to build blades for the bigger model of the turbine to fix the one installed in a school on the mountains of huanachuco. We have been having a lot of issues building these blades, the system in place just would not work so we were also trying to understand why. The house felt a bit more full again as there were 4 new volunteers and 2 of us long term still here so there was a great atmosphere. The mountain installation was a bit thought cause we are not used to the altitude and the cold made it hard to sleep, but it went well overall. We got to visit some other turbines that needed checking so that was fun too! This is the ... read more

The last week of building was very busy as we had been building 3 blades plus two test ones, and we had to finish the rest of the structure for the installation. It involved a lot of metal work and painting and finishing late but it's all good fun to do anyway! We had to pack two full turbines and one extra blade for a replacement, that's a lot to take on the bus ! The weekend before that final week, I met Catherine through a family friend, thank you Arthur Perin, she is here to work for 6 months helping co-operatives in the region to be more environmentally friendly. We went to visit the Chan Chan ruins together which are very interesting but less well preserved than the Huacas de la Luna that I saw ... read more

In the last 3 weeks I have not been keeping in touch much and I apologise for that. The reason is that after the playa blanca project, all the volunteers left except so things got really quiet, then a new group arrived and we ststarted building 5 blades like chain work cause we are going to replace some broken ones. I have entered a bit of a routine so not much new to talk about. However, I did go up in the mountains earlier this month to visit the group of students that had been building their turbines in August with us, they stayed 3 weeks in the mountains to install 2 big turbines. That was nearish the city of Cajamarca. On the day I spent up in the community we them, we had to install ... read more

Week 3 was surprisingly relaxed because we managed to be ahead of schedule and actually finished building the turbine on Thursday. Monday to Wednesday we did the final touches on the turbine and built the structure that will hold it together, that involves "metal work" if I can dare call it that, basically some grinding, drilling holes and welding pieces together! Never imagined myself doing that in my lifetime so it is very satisfying to succeed when on the first day here it terrified me. On Thursday, we put together a testing system to check that the controller ( box that converts the electricity made by the turbine into electricity used in the house). This is a whole system imagined by one of the permanent staff here so he finally put it to work, exciting days! ... read more

Week 2 has gone so fast, we have made good progress on the turbine! We have filled the rotor with resin (that's the one with the magnets). When that dried, we sanded it and put a protective layer of paint on the metal parts to reduce corrosion. We finally finished rolling these coils, all 6 of them, and connected them together into the stator by melting a bit of metal on the wires. We then filled it with resin too and left it over the weekend to dry. The blade has now been sanded, we drilled four holes in it. It will need to be balanced before we paint it. We started preparing the parts for the metal structure that will hold the turbine together. On Tuesday, I was taken to another project in Chocofan because ... read more

Week 1 at the Windaid workshop has gone really well, we have progressed well! We started by making the blade, it consisted of using a mould and injecting it with foam first. The next day, after trimming the edges and making, it was placed in a mould again with fibre glass and carbon fibre , then the we injected resin with a complicated system that made it look like a surgery room. We also worked on the stator, that consists of rolling copper coil but it is a lot harder than it looks cause it has to be a certain weight! We also worked on the rotor which consists of really strong magnets that also have to be put in a mould and covered in resin. These are different parts of the turbine. It's all so ... read more

Ancient Peru was the seat of several prominent Andean civilizations, most notably that of the Incas whose empire was captured by the Spanish conquistadors in 1533. Peruvian independence was declared in 1821, and remaining Spanish forces defeated in 1...more history